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Tuesday, December 26, 2017

Lek led a pretty normal childhood in a tiny town--much like every other girl living in that town. Her family owned a rice field where Lek helped out when she wasn't in school. She never could understand why she lived with her grandmother while the rest of her siblings lived with her parents--but never mentioned it--even to her two best friends. Then she was forced to leave school--her family needed her help more-but they did at least give her a small salary!

After several years she bumped into a boy she had known once when he and his brothers has hired onto the rice farm as extra hands. She liked him then--now she really liked him. He was charming and fun and well you know the type! Only her grandmother seemed to see through this guy-but of course said nothing. Lek married him and then the real troubles began.

He left her stranded and she moved back with her parents and grandmother. Then her father died leaving them with enormous bills. Her cousin came to her rescue and invited her to work in Pattaya at a bar she owned. Lek ultimately said yes--and her two best friends decided to go as well. She really did not have a choice--she certainly did not want her Mom to lose the rice farm! All went well until she realized that her husband had left her a little something--a baby. She had to return home and leave the baby with her mother--then return back to work.

This is the beginning of Behind The Smile - The Story of Lek, a Bar Girl in Pattaya. It is the 7th in the series and is actually a prequel to all the rest. I enjoyed learning about the culture of the people and why they sometimes did what they did. I can certainly understand that in that culture that Lek had to join the profession she did.

About the Book: (from Amazon)

At twenty-two years of age, Lek, an ordinary, contemporary, farm girl from the northern Thai Rice belt, had to go to Pattaya to work in the leisure industry to help her widowed mother pay off the mortgage to save the farm and keep her siblings in school.

This book, Lek - 'The Beginning', shows what her life was like before she had to leave her small, hard-working, but happy village and the only people she had ever known. It depicts the events that made her happy and those that saddened her in her early life from living with her grandmother to surviving with her husband, Tom.

At the very last moment, some friends step up to make Lek's transition to life in Thailand's number one sex city adjustment a little bit easier.

Author Owen Jones, from Barry, South Wales, came to writing novels relatively recently, although he has been writing all his adult life. He has lived and worked in several countries and travelled in many, many more.

He speaks, or has spoken, seven languages fluently and is currently learning Thai, since he lives in Thailand with his Thai wife of ten years.

"It has never taken me long to learn a language," he says, "but Thai bears no relationship to any other language I have ever studied before."

When asked about his style of writing, he said, "I'm a Celt, and we are Romantic. I believe in reincarnation and lots more besides in that vein. Those beliefs, like 'Do unto another...', and 'What goes round comes around', Fate and Karma are central to my life, so they are reflected in my work'.

His first novel, 'Daddy's Hobby' from the series 'Behind The Smile: The Story of Lek, a Bar Girl in Pattaya' has been followed by four sequels, but his largest collection is 'The Megan Series', eighteen novellas on the psychic development of a young teenage girl, the subtitle of which, 'A Spirit Guide, A Ghost Tiger and One Scary Mother!' sums them up nicely.
As Owen puts it:

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I enjoy learning about other cultures although I find myself sad about so many of the ways things happen. Couldn't everyone, every country be equal. There should not be anyplace that a woman has to live like that or not finish their education. This book sounds very good and though I don't like it we must know of such things to keep learning about the rest of the world and why.